Lessons Learned from Ebanks-Blake v Calder

Workshops

Albert Suites 2-3

Nov 17

● 01:15

- 02:45 PM

Lessons Learned from Ebanks-Blake v Calder

Sponsored by Health Partners Europe Group

VIDEO RECORDING by Prof James Calder

Consultant Foot and Ankle Surgeon, Fortius Clinic, London, UK

Date

Nov 17, 2026

Time

01:15

- 02:45 PM

Location

Albert Suites 2-3

Audience

Aimed at any medical consultant or practitioner with an interest in the risks associated with treating professional sportspeople and how best to mitigate them

About this Session

Lorna Hastings, Client Director at SEMPRIS will facilitate a conversation with Majid Hassan, Partner at Capsticks, and Simon Ball, Consultant Knee Surgeon at Fortius, with a video introduction from James Calder, defendant and consultant orthopaedic surgeon in the high-profile clinical negligence lawsuit brought by former professional footballer Sylvan Ebanks-Blake.

Highly experienced surgeons can encounter extraordinarily difficult clinical judgments, particularly in elite sport. Ebanks-Blake v Calder demonstrates how a decision that may make clinical sense to experienced practitioners can look very different when reconstructed years later through competing expert evidence and tested against the contemporaneous documentation.

Does the pressure and objective of return to elite performance properly alter the intervention threshold, and how should that reasoning be recorded? If there are defensible arguments for intervention and conservative management, how much of that decision-making should appear contemporaneously in the record? How do clinicians preserve their genuine contemporaneous reasoning so that, many years later, it doesn’t have to be reconstructed through expert reports?

Please come and join us in tackling some of these gnarly issues together.

Session Chair(s)

VIDEO RECORDING by Prof James Calder

Professor James Calder is an internationally recognised foot and ankle surgeon. He works with elite athletes and major sports organisations worldwide. He is a professor at Imperial College and co-founder of Fortius Clinic. He has held leadership roles in major orthopaedic societies. His research focuses on tendon, cartilage, and sports injuries.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, James was appointed clinical lead in setting up the NHS Nightingale Hospital London, he chaired the DCMS committee on the return of elite sport, and he has been consultant advisor to UK Health Security Agency for elite sports and performing arts since 2020. He has also chaired the expert group behind the UK Concussion Guidelines for grassroots sport. James was appointed OBE in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to sport and exercise.

In December 2025 the High Court found him liable in negligence in Ebanks-Blake v Calder [2025] EWHC 3327 (KB), over an ankle arthroscopy he performed in 2013 on the former Premier League footballer Sylvan Ebanks-Blake. Having found the experience humbling, James hopes that none of his peers find themselves in the same position, which is what prompted this workshop.

Who should attend?

Aimed at any medical consultant or practitioner with an interest in the risks associated with treating professional sportspeople and how best to mitigate them.